Mass Effect is the property of Bioware. 20th Century Fox owns the Alien/Predator franchise.

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Sorry for the delay. Real-life interfered in the form of me crashing my motorcycle. Nothing serious, but I had to type with one hand for a while. Things are better now, so I hope to get back to doing quick updates.

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July 24, 2228, human reckoning

Arcturus station

Admiral Drescher and general Perez were going over the latest reports from Shanxi. There had been a lot of those recently and with each report the situation seemed to be getting more complicated.

'Van Buren is quite elated isn't he?" Perez remarked

"Elated? That's probably an understatement. It's like all his birthdays have come at once."

"You sound less enthusiastic."

Admiral Drescher shrugged. "Look, I won't deny that it is gratifying to know that we can take on these aliens if we have to, and god knows that we needed that victory to soften the blow for what happened to Jankowski's force."

That had been a blow indeed. The research vessel had finally made it home, limping into Shanxi several days after knews from van Buren's victory had been received. That she had been able to do so at all was a major tribute to her builders, but the news she had brought had been dire. Both Gallipoli and Bomarsund had been lost, presumably with all hands. Combined with Auriga's own casualty list that brought the total death toll to more than seven hundred. On top of that, Auriga herself had taken so much damage that it seemed unlikely that she would ever be spaceworthy again. Not a good beginning for mankind's first interstellar war. Still, van Buren's victory had probably gone a long way toward evening the score.

"On the other hand," admiral Dreschner continued. "We've probably lost whatever chance we had of solving this peacefully and Shanxi is awfully exposed. If these aliens return, that's where they will attack, and if Shanxi falls the whole strategic situation will go straight to hell."

Perez nodded. "What about the prisoners? Any chance of opening communications through them?"

Admiral Drescher shook her head.

"Nothing I'm afraid. We're still working on getting even the most basic translation going. On top of that we have another problem: It seems they cannot eat human food. Something about their aminoacids turning the wrong way. The eggheads are trying to work something out, but it means that right now we have to focus on keeping them alive."

Van Buren's ships had picked up a number of lifepods, so they finally had an idea what the aliens looked like. Though somewhat bird-like in appearance they were not too dissimilar from humans in that they had two legs, two arms and recognizable facial features. Other than that the main comment had been that they probably tasted like chicken. Xenobiologists across human space would be salivating at the thought of the research they could be doing, but most of that would have to wait until both sides could understand each other. The last thing anyone wanted or needed was to further inflame the situation with accusations of prisoners of war being used for scientific experiments. Unfortunately, according to the latest reports humanity didn't have much of a choice if they wanted to keep the prisoners alive.

"So," Perez asked. "Assuming that they will attack us again before we can open negotiations. What can be done to make sure that Shanxi doesn't get overrun?"

"Not much I'm afraid. Right now we have two destroyers and six RDV's at Shanxi, van Buren's four destroyers in LV-758, and five frigates scouting the surrounding systems. Unfortunately, we still have no idea where these things came from. According to van Buren, the dormant relay in LV-758 is still very much dormant, so they didn't come from the other side. We'll have to search the surrounding star systems one at a time to determine their origins. Even with the help of unmanned probes, that is going to take time, and we'll have to wait for the scouts' reports before we can decide on a course of action. Even then we'll need permission from Earth before we make any real moves."

"What about fighter strength?"

Admiral Drescher shrugged. "By now I have three squadrons of SA-23 Starfuries at Shanxi, plus two squadrons of F-302s. That's as much as we can support logistically. It's not bad, but from what we've seen of the aliens' point defense we'll need a lot more to overwhelm them. If they come after Shanxi in strength we won't be able to stop them, unless I get permission to take second fleet there."

"I see." General Perez was clearly unhappy. "And how likely is that?"

"According to the latest update from general Spears? Does the phrase 'snowflake in hell' mean anything to you?"

Perez sighed. It wasn't really unexpected, but still... "So, are they deliberately stalling, or just stupid as usual?"

"From what I hear, a little of both. They are pretty stupid, of course, but earth's politicians seem to be stalling on purpose. They need to get re-elected and they think the best way to do that is by putting earth's interests before the colonies'. So, first fleet is not going to leave Sol and that means second fleet has to stay at Arcturus. Add to that the peace-puppies, who just want to welcome our 'new neighbours' with open arms, and nothing is going to get done. All the colonies combined don't have sufficient representation in the Assembly to push a major policy shift through if earth is against it."

"And then the historians still wonder how the corporations managed to gain so much power when we first went out into space. I hate to say it, admiral, but there are days when I wonder if we shouldn't have left them in power, instead of handing it all back to the politicians."

"You're not the only one. Hell, Exogeni has a major stake in Shanxi. If it were up to them, we'd have reinforced already."

"Actually, they alreay have. I just heard from general Williams on Shanxi. According to him Exogeni just brought in a full company of security troops to guard their facilities. Williams doesn't know whether to be grateful for the additional firepower or enraged that it's outside his control." Perez grinned for a moment, then he became serious again. "To get back on subject, if the navy cannot send reinforcements to Shanxi, there isn't anything I can do either. I have a full division of marines concentrated here at Arcturus now, with a second division on the way, but I'm not going to send them in, unless there is a reasonable guarantee that we can support them once they're on the ground."

The Citadel, Councillor Tevos' office

Councilor Tevos, representative of the Asari Republics on the citadel looked up from her terminal as her turian counterpart entered. It had been something of a surprise when Sparatus had asked to see her. He had only recently been appointed to the citadel council and so far had had had little interaction with his colleagues. Then again, that was not all that much of a surprise, seeing as how he had never desired this particular position. Tevos carefully hid the smirk that threatened to appear on her face. Sparatus had had bigger plans for his carreer. Less than a year ago he had made his bid to become the new primarch of the Turian Hierarchy and he had nearly succeeded. Unfortunately for him, nearly had just not been good enough and now primarch Fedorian occupied the highest position a turian could achieve. Since Fedorian was actually the younger of the two, it seemed unlikely that Sparatus would ever get a shot at the top again. In the mean time, the new primarch had appointed his former rival to the citadel council as a form of consolation price and Tevos knew, from bitter experience, how little consolation this particular price brought.

"What is it, councilor?"

Sparatus held out a datapad. "We have a problem."

-o-o-o-

"So, let me understand this correctly: Your scouting party made first contact with an unknown species, had two battles with them before being forced from the system, and we're only hearing about this now?"

"They were far from the nearest relay when the first contact occurred. By the time their first message reached the Palaven Command both battles had already taken place. There is a distinct lack of communication buoys in that part of space."

"I see. Still, now that we know, we have to get some diplomats out there right away, before things get completely out of control."

"Palaven command does not believe that council involvement would be wise at this moment." Sparatus voice was completely expressionless. "We are currently unaware of the location and size of the aliens' area of influence. Nor do we know how they will respond to these events. Until we have a better understanding of what we're dealing with, the primarch believes that this should be handled as a purely military matter. After all, we would not want to unnecessarily risk the lives of your diplomats."

Tevos had stiffened at the first words but forced herself to relax. The turians were touchy about their role as galaxy-wide peacekeepers. All the more so, because that role had long since become a subject of considerable controversy among the turians themselves. She would have to be very careful not to to push them too far. If they felt that they had no choice but to defy the council directly, the political ramifications would be dire.

"I assume," she said, carefully keeping her voice as expressionless as Sparatus' "that we will be informed as soon as the necessary information has been obtained."

"I would assume so, yes."

"Then I strongly recommend, that we convene a meeting of the entire council. Perhaps involving the ambassadors of the other races as well. After all, we will have to be prepared to open negotiations, once the hierarchy considers it safe for our diplomats."

"Ah, yes, I'm sure that would be wise, though we may want to wait with involving the non-council species until we have a better idea of the timetable that we're working with."

In other words, the primarch, or whoever is pushing him on this, wants the turians to go it alone and the universe will die of its own entropy before they invite the council to become involved. It was, unfortunately, not a new attitude, but not one that Tevos could hope to change, even if the managed to bring Sparatus around to her side of the argument. Officially the turian peacekeeping fleets answered to the council's authority, but in practice... It would definitely NOT do to bring that particular relationship out in the open.

"Of course, I'm sure you're right." A sudden thought occurred to her. "This new species, what do their ships look like?"

"Like someone slapped an engine on a collection of cargo boxes, why do you ask?"

"Because I've heard that description before." The small worry that Tevos had felt was growing rapidly. She opened a new screen on her display and searched through a long list of messages until she found the relevant entry. "I received a report from one of our survey ships, the Light of Dawn, a few days ago. Captain Shiana Armali found a derelict freighter of unknown design in an empty system and is moving to investigate. It may just be a coincidence, but-"

"No." Sparatus looked at the report, a grim look on his face. "It's the same general area of space. No way that it's just a coincidence. I'll send a message to Palaven command and ask them to dispatch reinforcements. At the very least they can warn your people."

Tevos breathed a sigh of relief. She might not be able to fix the bigger problem right away, but at least in the mean time she could do some good .

Aephus shipyards

"My little brother Saren is very upset." General Desolas Arterius, military governor of the Aephus shipyards, smirked a little. "I suppose I cannot blame him. Half the squadron wiped out, including his commanding officer, and he never even got close to the enemy. I've put him in command of the scout detail. That should at least give him something to do, other than brood on fate's injustices."

"So, have they had any success finding the aliens?" General Septimus Oraka, the other officer in the room asked. As second-in-command of the Aethus military district he knew about the scouting effort. In fact, if it had had any results, he should have known about that too. Unfortunately, general Arterius occasionally kept such information to himself.

"The humans, you mean."

"What?"

"Humans," general Arterius repeated. "That's what they call themselves according to the prisoners."

"So, they're finally talking?"

"Oh yes, we brought in a couple of asari to do the questioning." General Arterius' mandibles twitched in the turian equivalent of a smirk. "A friendly face, you know? They got further within a day than we had gotten in a week. No mind melds, of course. Asari don't like doing that kind of thing by force, but at least we have enough data on these humans' language to start working on a translation program."

"Does that mean that we'll be able to open negotiations?"

"Perhaps, assuming that they'll be willing to talk back. That brings me to the reason I asked you here. We've both seen the reports of what happened to Livestian and I need an assessment: if these humans aren't open to negotiations, can we defeat them? More to the point, can we defeat them quickly, without putting our entire people on a war footing?"

General Oraka looked thoughtful. "I would assume that we can defeat them, if we have to. From the reports, our technology is better. We have stronger weapons and better shields. Unless they have an overwhelming numerical advantage, we should eventually get the upper hand in space. Sure, those missile were a nasty surprise, but I've studied their performance record and I think we can deal with them. If a ship moves quickly enough, the missile will have to come out of stealth early or risk losing its target. That would allow the GUARDIAN lasers to take them out from a much longer range. Perhaps we can bring in fighters as part of the defense as well. Planetside, things may be tougher but the end result should be the same. On the ground technology means less, but we should have control of the orbitals. In the end that will give us the upper hand"

"So, what happened to recon squadron 24? Did the humans just get lucky?"

"They had all the advantages. They came in by surprise, deployed a type of weapon our people were not prepared for, and, frankly, they were far better led."

"You disapprove of Livestian's actions?"

General Oraka hesitated. "I don't want to speak ill of the dead. Captain Livestian had many good qualities. You can see it from his reports. His analysis was thorough and makes a great deal of sense, but his tactics... He would have made a good staff officer, but he was no use in the field."

Desolas nodded. Oraka's assessment seemed to match his own. Still, it never hurt to make sure. "Just so we understand each other perfectly. In your opinion, where did he go wrong?"

Oraka looked him straight in the eye.

"He didn't go wrong, so much, as that he just never went anywhere. He lost the initiative right away and never even tried to regain it. Look at the contrast. These, eh, humans came in with a clear plan and executed it flawlessly: Jump in close, launch those missiles, follow up with mass accelerators. Then they blew straight through Livestian's formation, turned around, and prepared to repeat the process. It has all the signs of people working from an established playbook. I doubt their commander even had to give any orders until Livestian ordered his ships to scatter and even then there was no hesitation. On the other hand, Livestian never quite made up his mind what he wanted to do. He didn't really want to fight and he didn't really want to run. So, he tried to do a little of both and failed completely.

"So, what should he have done, in your opinion."

"He had a choice: He could have run immediately, or he could have stood and fought. In the first case, well, he would probably have had to leave some of his fighters and shuttles behind. If he had decided to fight, he should have deployed all fighters, brought in his remaining frigate, and attacked aggressively. As it is, he got the worst of both worlds. Caught in place without fighter cover and then running for his life with the enemy battering him all the way."

"So, assuming that we put more competent commanders in the field, will we be able to defeat them? Quickly?"

Oraka considered the question carefully. "As I said before, it all comes down to numbers. They have the ability to hurt us, certainly. Now, if they are a relatively small entity, we should be able to overwhelm them in short order, but if they are anywhere near our size, it could get very, very ugly."

"And right now we cannot afford that." Desolas looked at his older colleague. "You know as well as I that we don't have the resources for a prolonged war, not unless we could get the other council races on board. We'd bankrupt ourselves. And, frankly, I don't see either the asari or the salarians supporting us beyond the required minimum. The asari never approve of full scale war unless all other options are exhausted and the salarians don't attack anything unless they have solid intelligence. No, we cannot count on their support."

From there the conversation moved on to other topics. Once general Oraka left, Desolas Arterius returned to studying the reports from the battles near Relay 314. It was clear that something had to be done before things spiraled out of control. The last thing the hierarchy needed was a major interstellar conflict dragging on for years. Then again, the next-to-last thing they needed was for the turians to end up looking like fools, first attacking an unknown species, then backing down as soon as the newcomers showed their teeth. It was a quandary, but perhaps..., perhaps it could also be an opportunity.

Geneva, Earth. The Assembly of the United Systems.

"...and therefore I must insist that our navy do all in its power to ensure that these alien invaders are kept away from our mother world. We simply cannot risk that humanity's home be threatened with invasion. Only once we can be assured that such danger has passed could we possibly risk the sort of reduction of our local military strength that will inevitably follow from any military adventures."

General Spears tuned out the droning voice of the latest speaker. After all, it was not as though this particular idiot had anything to say that had not been said before. For the past three days an endless row of speakers had presented all the arguments as to why the United Systems Military would have to remain frozen in place. A majority of Earth's elected politicians, still the largest block of votes in the Assembly, just wanted to make sure earth was defended at the expense of everything else (including rational thought). Iso=lationists from both earth and half a dozen of its oldest colonies just wanted for the problem to go away and figured ignoring it was the best policy. The pacifists had bewailed the conflict and were sure that a peaceful approach would persuade the aliens to become humanity's new BFFs, which provided all the other bury-your-head-in-the-sand advocates with a fig leaf of morality to hide behind. By now all views had been represented and the process had become repetitive. The handful of representatives of Shanxi and the colonies near Arcturus had argued vehemently in favor of immediate military action, but they didn't have anywhere near the required numbers to challenge the majority. Some of the big corporations, the ones that had financial interests in the Shanxi system, were lobbying in favor of action as well, but they were hampered by the bad reputation they had acquired during the past two centuries. Besides, there were as many corporations lobbying against military action as in favor. After all, those that had not invested in Shanxi figured that the others' loss would be their gain.

As Spears' eyes wandered around the giant hall, his gaze crossed that of chairwoman Patricia Hammerstein. There, he knew, lay the key to the whole issue. Traditionally the offices of Chair of the United Systems Assembly and General Secretary of Earth's United Nations were combined in one person. It had been one the concessions done to Earth during the formation of the United Systems and, combined with the fact that Earth provided the majority of the Assembly members, it concentrated tremendous influence in one individual. If anyone could swing the tide, even in the face of massive opposition it was ms. Hammerstein. So far she had refrained from public comment, exercising her privilege to give the final speech during any debate. Unfortunately, Spears suspected that behind the scenes she had been far more active than anyone suspected. Hammerstein had attained her current position based on a pro-earth platform that had already resulted in a reduction of both military expenditure and government funded colonization efforts. If she was pushing others to block any form of military reinforcement of Shanxi, she could get what she wanted without ever taking responsibility for the policy and whatever disasters might follow form it.

The speaker had finished and yielded the floor for the next pontificating fool who thought he was entitled to an opinion. Spears sighed. If they continued like this it might not even matter what decision they reached. The war would be over before they finished talking. In fact, that might well be the whole point of this exercise.

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Obviously the total death toll is going to be worse than in canon, but that is hardly surprising. In canon the humans lost less than 700 people, but considering the size of ME crews a single naval engagement should already have put them there. If you add orbital bombardments it almost has to get a lot higher.

For the situation involving the Light of Dawn, please read my first story Someone has heard them scream.

RandomReader: Yes, a rapidly manoeuvering target would be a problem. It would be a race to see if the missile can close the distance before the target ship gets out of the engagement envelope. That puts an upper limit on the range at which you can effectively deploy the ASAT missiles. On the other hand, the ASAT missile could fire its second stage early and just go for a high speed approach, using small, random, course changes and electronic warfare to counter enemy point defense, rather than stealth. In any case, I certainly don't think they are the ultimate tactical weapon. More like a clever trick that humans came up with to make use of their missile technology that would otherwise have been made obsolete by the discovery of element zero.